Init Systems Debate

It's not about SysVInit. It's about supporting other init systems (OpenRC, runit, s6)

… you’re mourning SysV init scripts? why?

I'll be the first to call out systemd for a lot of things, but not its core init idea. It's the same as daemontools, upstart, supervisord, and others do. Implementation is very different of course, but the idea is common - you run/kill services, not start/stop them. That's the reason we can leave the ugly and error-prone init scripts behind.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that SysV init scripts are not the path forward. For example, Debian switched to systemd, and I'm pretty sure that the options were Upstart or systemd -- nobody really wanted to stay with init scripts.Main problems as I understand them:- Duplication. init scripts don't even restart daemons if they crash; or if they do you have to duplicate the restart logic in every init script. IMO distros generally do a poor job with their init scripts. T

As a sysadmin, I'll take systemd units over SysV init scripts any day. They tend to be shorter, more simple to read, and I don't have to worry about the race conditions or services not restarting correctly due to varying daemonization techniques.

The software that is just a better init system continues to not be.

Sorry but a slightly better script based init system maintained by one person just isn't gonna cut it.

What are the benefits of using something like this if your OS comes with a modern init like systemd?

I've worked with init.d style init systems that had those features using special comments and sourced helper functions, but I bet if you wanted to do it all properly you'd end up with something like systemd. Or GNU Shepherd!

Is there an init system which doesn't suck?